Free public education: Gonski reforms are all but dead

Free public education has existed for more than a century in Australia, and Abbott and Pyne know they cannot change that. So what are they really planning?

By Glenn Savage

UpdatedJune 23, 2015 — 1.19amfirst published June 22, 2015 — 1.45pm

If the Australian public ever needed proof that school funding is a mess or that the Gonski reforms are all but dead, we now have it.

A confidential discussion paper by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet shows how radically the Abbott government has departed from the equitable funding model proposed by the Gonski report in 2011. Not only is Gonski gone, but it also appears that a range of weird and wonderful new reform options is on the table.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

The paper emerges in response to current Reform of the Federation processes and flags four major options for comprehensively reshaping school funding in our nation. Options include: transferring all funding responsibilities for public schools to the states and territories; the federal government only funding private schools; scaling back government involvement in school funding programmes; or making the federal government the main funder of public and private schools.

Shortly after Fairfax broke the story that the discussion paper contained a proposal that wealthy parents pay for their children to attend public schools, Education Minister Christopher Pyne quickly rejected the idea. Nonetheless, the fact that such radical proposals are being floated at all shows how far Australia is from political consensus on what an appropriate school-funding system looks like. It also reflects the extreme lengths the Abbott government is considering in order to re-shape education in the name of economic efficiency.

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The notion of high-income parents paying for their children to attend public schools comes out of the fourth option, which would see the Commonwealth become the dominant funder of all schools. The paper suggests the federal government would adjust school funding amounts based on "student need and the ability of families to make a contribution".

It then adds: "States and Territories would have the option to 'top-up' funding to government schools, if they wished to do so, to ensure all public school students, regardless of the ability of families to make a contribution, were able to attend for free".

The devil, therefore, is in the detail. While the paper does not explicitly state that parents will be charged fees, it is implicit within the argument. Under this option, the federal government would give schools less money and if the states and territories cannot afford to top it up, the onus would fall to parents.

This proposal bears a curious similarity to a recommendation made last year by free market think tank Centre for Independent Studies, which suggested charging "$1000 per student from high-income families attending government schools". The CIS report, titled School Funding on a Budget, argues that such a change could save governments $250 million per year.

As the government's discussion paper rightly points out, such a move would drive 'school choice', which is code in policy circles for promoting the 'marketisation' of schooling. For example, if a parent was faced with $1000 fee for their child to attend a local public school, it would increase the incentive to leave the public system altogether and enrol their child in a private school.

Over time, therefore, such a reform has the capacity to increase the drift of higher income families away from the public school system, which will only serve to increase the gulf between private and public schools by further concentrating disadvantaged young people in the public system.

Australians have had access to free public education for well over a hundred years. While Australian states have constitutional responsibility for education and remain the principal funders of public schools, federal governments have progressively increased their share funding for Australian schools since the Karmel Report in 1973.

This week's leaked report flags an extreme makeover to this historical settlement and potentially puts at risk free universal access to public schooling. Pyne came out strongly this morning on Twitter, suggesting, "Charging wealthy parents for their children to attend public schools is not the government's policy. I don't support it".

Not only is Gonski gone, but it also appears that a range of weird and wonderful new reform options is on the table.

He added: "The Australian government does not and will not support a means test for public education. Full stop. End of story." Regardless of whether Pyne supports it or not, the proposal has come out of the Prime Minister's department and must be taken as a serious reflection on the government's current thinking on schooling policy.

Pyne and Abbott both know that such reforms are unlikely to ever come to fruition, as they would require a historically unprecedented shift in the governance of Australian schooling that would need to be agreed to by federal, state and territory governments.

The question begs, therefore, what symbolic work has this paper been designed to do? If it is simply "flying a kite" to see which way public opinion is blowing, what type of reforms are really under serious consideration?

Regardless of what happens, it is clear the report will reignite the already contentious debate about growing inequalities in Australian schooling and the yawning gulf between public and private schools.

In my view, it is a sad reflection on the state of the current funding discussion that the imperative of cost-cutting is obscuring more fundamental questions about what a quality education looks like, and what is required to achieve it.

Dr Glenn Savage is a researcher and lecturer in education policy in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne.